Hassan Sharif, a New Jersey imam and community leader, passed away on January 3, hours after he was shot multiple times in front of his mosque as he headed into morning prayer.
The New Jersey branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said Sharif was a “beacon of leadership and excellence.”
At a press conference that same day, New Jersey Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin said that “this investigation is ongoing, but at this time we do not have any information suggesting the crime was motivated by bias.”
Since October 7, Islamophobic and anti-Arab attacks have risen dramatically in the United States, with CAIR reporting an “unprecedented” spike in requests for help and bias reports between October 7 and November 5.
In November, three Palestinian college students were shot in Vermont while speaking Arabic and wearing keffiyehs. One of those students, Hisham Awartani, will be paralyzed from the chest down for the rest of his life. In October, a 6-year-old Palestinian boy was stabbed to death by his landlord while at home in Illinois. The boy, Wadea Al Fayoume, was stabbed 26 times, and his mother could not attend his funeral because she was also injured in the attack. According to the mother, shortly before the stabbing, the attacker, 71-year-old Joseph M. Czuba, told her he was angry over what was happening in Jerusalem.
